On 6/28/06, mboverload <mboverload@gmail.com > wrote:
Sounds like an utter mess. Thanks so much for taking the time to
explain it
to me, even if I'm still not sure why it's such a big issue =O
The big issue comes mainly from the desinformation that mo.wikipediacreates.
The content that is currently on mo.wikipedia is written in a language that is not used any more in the Republic of Moldova. It could be argued that Moldovan is used by a minority in the territory of Moldova (in private and personal matters), and by a part of population (mainly Moldovan schools) in Transnistria. Please note that Cyrillic Moldovan is not used on a large scale (that is, generally speaking, you won't encounter Moldovan Cyrillic anywhere in Moldova). At least for Moldova, I can assure you, as I am a native Moldovan. As far as Transnistria is concerned, I really doubt it. Even the official presidential website http://www.president-pmr.org/doesn't contain any Cyrillic Moldovan content.
The big issue: when people visit mo.wikipedia.org and see the Cyrillic content, they believe that this is the language currently used in Moldova. One thing that is false, as it is the content of ro.wikipedia.org that one may see in Moldova (anywhere: advertisment, television, newspapers, books, laws, documents, anywhere). While Wikipedia is supposed to provide readers with correct information. For Moldovans and Romanians alike such a situation is frustrating.
By all this I am trying to explain that current Cyrillic content has nothing to do on mo.wikipedia. If it has any right to exist (low quality content, no native contributors, no native people's support of its existance [at least not here, not on this mailing-list]), it should be somewhere on a mo-cyr.wikipedia.
I'll have you know that Moldovan is my native language. It is the first
language I
heard, and I heard no other language until the age of 3.
Please see: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22first+language+attrition%22
Mark
What concerns the native speakers present on Wikipedia, I personally do not qualify Mark Williamson's affirmation of him being a native speaker of Moldovan. The Moldovan Wikipedia issue was already discussed at least three times in the recent past: in December 2005http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2005-December/, in March 2006 http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/and currently in June 2006 http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-June/.
The reason for my opinion is that before 28 June 2006http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-June/044584.html, not one time (at least not to my knowledge and not on the Wikipedia-I mailing list ; please correct me if I am wrong) did Mark ackowledge himself as being a native Moldovan speaker. Although he had plenty of occasions, for examplehttp://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/043992.html , to use this argument. On Jacky PB's simple assertion on 12 March 2006http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/043910.html: "no Moldovan speaker ever asked for a Moldovan Wikipedia", Mark's response is "Dpotop is spreading FUD". And, as far as I know, Moldovan Wikipedia was created on Mark Williamson's demand.
I am wondering if shouldn't the decision on closing down the Moldovan Wikipediahttp://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/043897.htmlbe put in action as soon as possible, to avoid all these useless discussions (if my calculations are correct, the next re-openning of this discussion is scheduled on September 2006http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-September/). The closing should have been carried out by Brion somewhere in March.
If there are users who want to get out of the state of confusion regarding this issue, they could look here for an acceptably well put status quohttp://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects#What_decision_makers_need_to_knowand here for some background http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Rezultat_alegeri informationhttp://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-March/043799.html(one on the Moldovan Wikipedia, the other on the mailing list; both contain the results of a vote that took place several months ago).